If winter days get you down, you're not alone. You may have seasonal affective disorder, a type of depression triggered by the change of seasons. People with this disorder tend to feel depressed in the fall and winter, when ...

With winter in the northern hemisphere approaching, it's not uncommon for people to feel sluggish or moody. Those symptoms can be typical of someone experiencing seasonal affective disorder (SAD), a type of depression that ...

Sunshine matters. A lot. The idea isn't exactly new, but according to a recent BYU study, when it comes to your mental and emotional health, the amount of time between sunrise and sunset is the weather variable that matters ...

Exposure to bright light increases testosterone levels and leads to greater sexual satisfaction in men with low sexual desire. These are the results of a pilot randomised placebo-controlled trial, presented at the ECNP conference ...

Between worrying about which candidate will win and what changes they may implement, the months leading up to Election Day can be stressful. One Baylor College of Medicine expert warns that this can lead to election stress ...

New research presented at this year's International Early Psychosis Association (IEPA) meeting in Milan, Italy (20-22 October) shows that low vitamin D status is associated with increased negative and depressive symptoms ...

Researchers for the first time have identified the skin phenotype of pediatric eczema or atopic dermatitis (AD) in infants, opening the door for personalized treatment approaches for young children with eczema. The study, ...

As the days get shorter, darker and colder, people seem to be getting gloomier. For folks with seasonal affective disorder, the changing seasons can make them sadder than most, to the point of depression.

For some people, this time of year—when the days are short, darker and cold—means depression that can interfere with things like work, sleep and eating. This phenomenon, called seasonal affective disorder (SAD), goes ...

Seasonal affective disorder (SAD), also known as winter depression, winter blues, summer depression, summer blues, or seasonal depression, is a mood disorder in which people who have normal mental health throughout most of the year experience depressive symptoms in the winter or summer, spring or autumn year after year. In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), SAD is not a unique mood disorder, but is "a specifier of major depression".

Although experts were initially skeptical, this condition is now recognized as a common disorder, with its prevalence in the U.S. ranging from 1.4 percent in Florida to 9.7 percent in New Hampshire.

The U.S. National Library of Medicine notes that "some people experience a serious mood change when the seasons change. They may sleep too much, have little energy, and may also feel depressed. Though symptoms can be severe, they usually clear up." The condition in the summer is often referred to as reverse seasonal affective disorder, and can also include heightened anxiety.

SAD was formally described and named in 1984 by Norman E. Rosenthal and colleagues at the National Institute of Mental Health.

There are many different treatments for classic hormones (winter-based) seasonal affective disorder, including light therapy with sunlight or bright lights, antidepressant medication, cognitive-behavioral therapy, ionized-air administration, and carefully timed supplementation of the hormone melatonin.

Short telomeres—the protective caps on the ends of chromosomes—have been previously linked to increased risk of death from heart disease. Now, research by scientists at UC San Francisco and the Veterans Affairs Medical ...

An achievement by UCLA neuroscientists could lead to a better understanding of astrocytes, a type of cell in the brain that is thought to play a role in Lou Gehrig's disease, also called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ...

An international team of researchers involving the University of Adelaide is tackling the controversy over what some scientists consider to be a "harmful" hormone, arguing that it could be a game changer in the fight against ...

Breast cancer cells break away and spread to other parts of the body relatively late on in breast tumour development, an international team of scientists has shown. The research, jointly led by Dr Peter Van Loo at the Francis ...

Discovered in the 1970s, tumor suppressors are among the most important proteins in the body. A master regulator of growth—"the guardian of the genome"—the p53 protein monitors cell growth for errors. We rely on suppressors ...